Progress!

Happy Holidays! We've been making progress here at our Dynamic Green Home. 

Here's some pictures of the first floor walls we painted.

Kitchen Walls (painted)     © harrington

Living Room Walls (painted)  © harrington

We've also started patching the floors on the first floor. 

Here's what that looks like.

First Floor floor repairs           © harrington

Then, we need to 

1. hook up our equipment, 

2. scrape where needed, and 

3. sand everywhere.

1. Sander with vacuum            © harrington

2. Scraping gunk off floors              © harrington

3. Sanding the floor              © harrington

After the holidays we're going to do a workshop on finishing the sanded floors. We're still sorting the schedule on that. 

Check back soon for the date and come see how it's done.

A little help from our friends?

Today is Sunday, December 15. We've got two, that's 2!, days to go in our Barn Raising for the Dynamic Green Home project. Our volunteers, sponsors, material donors and other contributors have helped make awesome progress and we're headed toward something we can all be proud of.  Now, we need your help to get us the rest of the way. To quote from an (in)famous movie "we've got a long way to go and a short time to get there." Here's a link: DGH Barn Raising so you can contribute.

Here's what the floors looked like last weekend.

first floor before Barn Raising

first floor before Barn Raising

first floor before Barn Raising

This weekend, and after the holidays, we're going to be scraping and wiping and vacuuming and patching and renting sanders and sanding and vacuuming and applying several coats of finish. We'll go from something you might hesitate to walk on to something you might be willing to eat from? Anyway, we're going to make  huge improvements, so these floors will be OK for kids to play on.

Did I mention we need your help to do this? Did I give you a link to our Barn Raising site? Wouldn't you like to be able to come back to this blog in a few weeks and see the great looking floors YOU helped provide? How's that for a Happy Holidays memory? 2013? oh, yeah, that was the year we gave a local family a healthy green home. I donated a can of stain. My wife chipped in a floor tile. Does that work for you?

Enjoy your holidays! Help someone else enjoy theirs?

DGH Painting Primer: Success!

Saturday, December 7, was our Dynamic Green Home Painting Primer. Thanks to the dozen or so volunteers who came out in some remarkable cold to learn and paint. Thanks as well to our Sponsors and Partners, represented by

• Paul Bergevin (Hirshfield's Paint) 
• Steve Lincowski (Wooster Brush) 

 and to our DGH crew members

• Phil Kirkegaard (general contractor) 
• Cindy Martimo (interior design teacher at Dunwoody)

Next week we'll have some pictures of the finish coats when we show up for the Fundamentals of Flooring session. (Speaking of which, have you contributed to our Barnraisings effort yet?) 

For now, here are some shots of what Saturday looked like.

Welcome Volunteers sign         © harrington

Volunteers signing in        © harrington

Paul Bergevin, Hirshfield's        © harrington

environmentally friendly, family owned, local   © harrington

low and no VOC contractor's paints      © harrington

zero VOC paint          © harrington

Steve Lincowski, Wooster  © harrington

commercial grade brushes and rollers       © harrington

brushes and rollers awaiting volunteers     © harrington

wall, before painting            © harrington

volunteers cutting in and rolling    © harrington

volunteers cutting in and rolling    © harrington

volunteers cutting in and rolling    © harrington

One of the things that I learned is that changing the composition of paint to make it low or no VOC triggers a need for corresponding changes in application tools. We already know that Hirshfield's has been working to produce their paints in an environmentally friendly way. Hirshfield's and Wooster have been working for quite awhile at making it better and easier for contractors (and homeowners) to be more environmentally sensitive when painting.

Join us next weekend at our Dynamic Green Home for Fundamentals of Flooring. We'd love to see you there.

Help Wanted

Happy Holidays. As you read this, are you somewhere warm, maybe at home. Are you healthy and looking forward to the exchange of presents during your celebration of the holidays? Would you consider adding one more request to your list?

DGH 929 Edmund Credit Board     © harrington

During the next few days you have a chance to help give a Twin Cities family a healthy, affordable home where they can enjoy their holidays. For a few hours of your time or a few dollars of your money, you can help us "green up" our first Dynamic Green Home.

Let's try to put some perspective on why this is really important. There have been numerous studies on the benefits of (and need for) healthy housing. The United States Green Building Council, in a 2012 brief, found:

"An unhealthy home with high operating costs due to inefficiency in energy and water consumption is not affordable....

"Currently, high utility bills are pervasive in the affordable housing. Indeed, low - income households spend on average 19.5% of annual income on home energy costs, while the average for median - income households is just 4.6%.1 ... high utility bills are a serious problem, but asthma, allergies, and other chronic problems that can be exacerbated by exposure to toxins in the built environment can be matters of life and death..."

1"The Cold Facts: The First Annual Report on the Effect of Home Energy Costs on Low - income Americans. " National Fuel Funds Network , National Low - income Energy Consortium , National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association . 2002.  http://www.nliec.org/facts.pdf 

The Minnesota Chapter of the USGBC, working with Greater Frogtown Community Development Corporation and our community partners, is taking care of two major healthy home factors in the green rehabilitation of 929 Edmund Street. First, this coming weekend (December 7), with help from Hirshfield's, we're painting the interior with low VOC paints. Join us if you can and donate some time. Give yourself a chance to feel really good this season. Second, and here's where we could use both your money and your time, we're fundraising for our Fundamentals of Flooring work the following weekend (December 14).

929 Edmund St. (before)        © harrington

Why are we making such a deal of this? Why do we think this is not only important, but critical? Hardwood floors provide fewer places for dust mites and other asthma triggers to hide than does wall to wall carpeting. They also make it easy to see when it's time to vacuum or sweep. Have you ever seen the costs of treating asthma, just for our children in Minnesota? They're astounding.

According to the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 

"The best estimate of total costs of environmentally attributable childhood diseases in the state of Minnesota is $1.569 billion per year, with a range of $1.393 to $1.890 billion. Cost estimates for specific diseases are: 

 Childhood asthma: $30.6 million  Childhood cancers: $8.2 million
 Lead poisoning: $1.223 billion  Birth defects: $4.5 million
 Neurobehavioral disorders (excluding lead): $303 million"

So, we know that childhood asthma costs Minnesota more than $30 million a year. It costs the families of these children much more than money. There's lost time from school for acute attacks. Lost learning when children don't feel well. Anxiety and stress for parents. Let's speculate for a minute that substantially reducing asthma triggers in a green, healthy home doesn't eliminate asthma, but reduces the frequency and severity of asthma attacks by 40%. Simple math tells me we could save more than $12 million dollars every year on our health bills under such a scenario.

Dynamic Green Home (work in progress)        © harrington

We're working to make our Dynamic Green Homes strategy replicable. Helping us now will let us help many more families in the future. Join us. Make this holiday season a merry, happy, healthy one for your family and at least one other family in the Twin Cities. Thanks!